Fantasy Football Pickups for Week 11
Yahoo Fantasy analysts Matt Harmon and Andy Behrens offer four players who could be in for increased workloads in the coming weeks.
Video Transcript
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MATT HARMON: All right, Andy, coming into week 11 here. The season is flying by. The misery is stacking up for the players you drafted. I mean, for God's sakes, there's so many disappointments. There's so many weird things going on in the NFL right now. And obviously, that has to trickle down to people's fantasy football teams. So in order to maybe get past some of that weirdness, who are some people that the folks out there should pick up heading into week 11?
ANDY BEHRENS: Week 10 was so weird. The strangest players scored touchdowns, and the best players did not. It was wild. I've got a couple of running backs for you right off the top, guys that I did not expect to be talking about at any point during the season, yet here we are. The first is going to be Ty Chandler in Minnesota. Now he had stepped into the Cam Akers role. Of course, Cam Akers lost for the season.
So it looked, early in that game, like Chandler was probably going to finish 10, 12 touches in that thing. He wasn't particularly efficient. He was actually having a very Cam Akers-like game, averaged about 3 yards per carry. He did score a touchdown, which is the good news. This is a very fast man. He came into the league with 4.38 speed, so we like that. We like the athletic traits.
Late in the game, Alexander Mattison goes down with a concussion. So now, all of a sudden, we're looking at a scenario where Chandler, at least for a week, could be the lead back for Minnesota.
The other name I'll throw out, Rico Dowdle. He had a really nice game, obviously, for Dallas in a noncompetitive contest against the Giants, I guess we would say. He carried 12 times--
MATT HARMON: Putting it kindly. Putting it kindly to call it a noncompetitive contest.
ANDY BEHRENS: That was about as friendly a spin as I can give the Giants, not that they deserve it. 12 carries, 79 yards, a touchdown. Most of the fantasy noise kind of occurred during Cooper Rush time, right? It was late in the game. But he was playing early. I don't need to explain to people that Tony Pollard has-- it's been kind of a struggle for Tony Pollard this year. And all of a sudden, the discourse around Pollard and Dowdle sounds a lot like the discourse around Pollard and Zeke from last year, right?
I don't want to overstate who Dowdle is. Because he actually entered week 10 averaging 3.8 yards per carry. It certainly seems as if Dowdle is claiming a share of that workload. And then the matchup ahead for those guys, it's Carolina. So we have the exact same scenario where it could be not such a competitive game in which Dowdle gets a lot of run in the second half.
MATT HARMON: I like both those names. Look, this portion of the season, it's all about stashing those backup running backs who could rise up depth charts or get a boost in the event of an injury. This time of year, it's also about which rookie receiver is going to be the breakout guy to end the year. So I'll throw out a couple of candidates here that I think are maybe a little lower under the radar than some of the other well-known players.
Jayden Reed for the Green Bay Packers is the first one. He's cleared 80 yards in two of his last three games. He scored a touchdown against the Pittsburgh Steelers. I think Jayden Reed has played really well. I think it's time for the Packers to reconsider kind of redistributing these first-look targets, the first-read targets away from Christian Watson, who hasn't had a very good second season.
And the other guy I'll throw out here is Michael Wilson. And you're saying, oh, I mean, come on, he had three for 34 against the falcons. Who cares? That's not that exciting. But he was inches away from a touchdown, and we'd be talking about him a lot more in these waiver wire pickup articles and videos and stuff like that.
The guy played 89% of the snaps. He's the clear starting receiver. He's actually cleared 80% of the snaps in four straight games so far. He missed one due to injury, which he missed the Clayton Tune experience. Didn't miss very much in that one. So in his first game back with Kyler Murray, I think that it's a lot of excitement kind of under the radar building up for Michael Wilson here.
So those are two potential stash running backs who could come into bigger roles down the stretch. Those are two potential rookie receivers who could be on the rise. Trying to get you in a little early there. Good luck rest of season. Hopefully, the rest of the way is not as weird as week 10 was.